World
EU Biometric Borders Live, No Sanctions for Member States
The EU's Entry/Exit System declared operational in April after three missed deadlines, flagging roughly 4,000 overstays across 30 million crossings in its first four months. Greece exempted British tourists without filing the required notice; the regulation provides no specific sanction for that defiance.
The EU's Entry/Exit System began fingerprinting and photographing non-EU nationals at Schengen borders on October 12, 2025, three years after its first missed launch date.
Atos, IBM, and Leonardo built the core IT infrastructure for €140 million under a 2018 contract. IDEMIA and Sopra Steria won the biometric matching framework for €300 million in 2020. Both figures are contract awards; eu-LISA has not published cumulative disbursements against either in a single public document.
eu-LISA declared full deployment across all 29 participating countries on April 10, 2026.
Hendrik Nielsen, a Commission official, told MEPs in February the system had processed 30 million crossings and flagged roughly 4,000 overstays. That is about one flag per 7,500 crossings, with no prior baseline from manual stamping to measure against.
The install problem
Lisbon Airport suspended EES checks for three months from December 2025, citing severe congestion. It resumed in early 2026. As of May 18, Portugal refused Ryanair's request to pause again for summer; Lisbon's mayor called for suspension the following day.
France installed 320 enrollment kiosks at CDG and Orly before October, braced for queues topping four hours, then missed its 150-day rollout target in March.
At the Channel crossings, EES hardware was installed but biometric-capture software failed performance tests before April 10. Manual passport stamping continues there. Aéroports de Paris is still installing 90 more kiosks.
Three unnamed member states remained below eu-LISA's 35 percent enrollment threshold as of March, all because of equipment failures at crossing points.
The compliance ceiling
Greece suspended biometric collection for British tourists in April, skipping the formal notification process the regulation requires. The Commission contacted Athens, stating the rules "do not foresee blanket exemptions for nationals of specific third countries."
Greek police have since said they will apply their own interpretation of EU rules. No infringement procedure has been opened, and the regulation sets out no specific sanctions for non-compliance.
At least five other participating states, including Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, are running queue-based workarounds, skipping biometrics when wait times exceed set thresholds. Italy's is a national emergency decree through September 30, 2026, not an invocation of the EES flexibility mechanism.
The Commission's response to Greece implies the actual compliance ceiling. The EES regulation carries no sanctions clause. Any state prepared to skip the notification requirement is in the same position Athens now occupies.
Italy's emergency decree runs to September 30, 2026. If Brussels has not announced a review of the EES sanctions framework by then, the summer of 2026 will have priced the Schengen biometric obligation at zero.